Conventional search engines receive a search query from a user and execute a search against a global index. A search engine performs the search based on a conventional search method. For example, one known method, described in an article entitled “The Anatomy of a Large-Scale Hypertextual Search Engine,” by Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, assigns a degree of importance to a document, such as a web page, based on the link structure of the web page. The search results are often presented in a list format, comprising article identifiers and brief snippets about the documents in a web page that can be resized.
Other applications, such as email applications, allow a user to perform a search against a local index, such as the email message store. However, users of conventional systems are unable to perform a search against a local and a global index and have the results combined in an effective manner.
Thus, a need exists to provide effective systems and method for unification of search results.